Noteworthy due to potential shoe quality issues and poor customer service from the company.

Has anyone been in a similar situation or have advice on a situation I am going through at the moment with Way of Wade which is concerning me greatly from both a quality and customer service perspective.

I bought a pair of 11's which were delivered last Thursday and everything seemed normal so as I would usually do I decided to wear these shoes to walk around a bit to wear them in before taking them onto the court. I was walking around a shopping center for about 30 mins when I saw that the stitching on one of the shoes had completely come away (see photos attached - I have also added photos of the full shoes so it shows that these are basically unworn and the stitching issue is obviously a factory fault)

As you would expect I contacted the support line immediately providing the above information and photos of the issues which I received a reply essentially saying "sorry for your inconvenience we can offer you a refund of $30USD". Of course these shoes were bought for closer to $230 so this offer did not seem fair to me at all given the fact they were delivered 1 day before and were only worn to walk in a shopping center for 30 mins. After I expressed this concern they replied again stating that they got special approval to up the refund to $40 which again does not come close to a fair compensation given the immediate and obvious fault. My view was that a full refund or a replacement would be the only fair outcome (correct me if I am off base here).

After a few more emails they then asked for photos of the underside of the shoes which I sent and then they replied asking me to clean some dust off them and then resend the photos. This stuck me as strange and my concern is they are doing this as they intend to re-sell these faulty shoes to someone else if they refund me which just does not seem right to me.

I suppose my questions are, is this normal practice for Way of Wade? Am I being unreasonable in my request and views and finally does anyone have any advice on the best way to try and get a fair outcome?

Pictures Of Way Of Wade Quality & Customer Service Concern